This invention relates to grass catchers, and in particular, to grass catcher for a rider lawn motor having a side grass discharge port in the blade housing.
Riding lawn mowers are widely used. These mowers are generally used for cutting grass on large lawns, and further for clipping and mulching leaves and other organic material on such lawns. It is desirable to have all of the debris thrown from the outlet of the mowing blade housing such as grass clippings, thatch, and leaves, collected so that they do not fall on the cut lawn. It is, therefore, necessary to provide means to contain the clippings on the mower and easily dispose of the container contents.
Various types of containers for collecting debris produced from a riding lawn mower have previously been suggested. Periodically, as the container is filled to capacity, the container must be emptied before equipment operation can continue. In the absence of automatically powered emptying means (which are very expensive and complicated), a user must stop the rider mower, dismount, and manually empty the container, either by physically removing and upending it, or by directly removing the collected load of debris itself. Proper safety precautions demand that the user completely halt operation of the rider mowing equipment and fully deboard prior to carrying out such emptying procedure.
The disruptive effect this causes to the user's efforts to complete the required work and the added physical exertion it requires of him or her are significant. This is especially so given that, where a receptacle container is reduced in size to lessen the weight and volume of its load capacity (so as to minimize the physical exertion required to empty it), the frequency with which the container must be emptied is necessarily increased. Conversely, where the receptacle assembly's container is increased in capacity to reduce the frequency with which it must be emptied, the container quickly becomes much more cumbersome and difficult to empty. Yet, prompt and regular emptying of the receptacle assembly's container remains a necessity, lest a clog form in the chuted path through which solid debris is expelled and directed from the vehicular equipment's working mower deck to the receptacle assembly not only interrupting further equipment operation, but requiring the user to take the necessarily time consuming and inconvenient remedial measures.